


Nowhere Man

by mickeym



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Episode Tag, Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-01
Updated: 2010-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 12:12:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mickeym/pseuds/mickeym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's nowhere and everywhere; he's in the cage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nowhere Man

**Author's Note:**

> Contains possibly disturbing imagery and references to violence and death.

_Feeling…flailing…falling._

 _Fallen._

It's dark, but it's light. Too bright, full of shadows dancing, circling, winding their way around. No beginning, no end. Everything just is.

Behind him _beside around under over next to_ Adam's body lies broken, arms flung outward and legs bent oddly; a rag doll tossed aside when playtime was over.

Sam wonders if his body looks the same. He can't see himself, can't see anything—

\--sees everything.

Feels nothing. Feels everything. He's surrounded by hot and cold; they swirl around him and through him, pain and pleasure twining within him.

Feathers stroke over his skin, gently, then purposefully. Each touch sings through him, sings around him, a sibilant hiss he feels and hears.

Lightly, then harder, and he feels the gouges in his skin; feels the flesh splitting, opening, imagines the blood hot and dark, spilling out. Wonders if his blood tastes like _their_ blood tasted. Feels a hunger grow inside him greater than he can contain.

 _Do it. Take it. Feed._

It's vocal, and it's not, all around him and thundering inside his head.

His thoughts? Or someone else's? Sam can't forget he's not alone in here.

The feathers cut him again, deep slashes down, down, into him, and in the nothing Sam sees the white glimmer of bone shimmering under rich crimson.

Something howls around him; howls with hunger, need, desperation, and Sam raises his arm to his mouth. Licks and sucks, coppery taste spreading over his tongue.

He drinks until the hunger is assuaged; until the whispers around him quiet.

It's completely silent again, thick and suffocating silence pressing against him. Sam takes a breath, then another, but there's no air, there's nothing. A cool-warm tendril swirls over his throat, slides inside him and back out again. Lucifer? Michael? Both?

 _Yes_ thunders inside his head, echoes there, over and over. _We're here._

"Am I dead?"

 _You are and you're not. You're everywhere and nowhere, everything and nothing._

Their battle begins, plays out in flashes of red and black, of light and shadow. Sam closes his eyes and still sees it, feels it; hisses in pain when phantom claws bite into him, dragging his insides out and back again.

Sometimes Adam's body dances with his; sometimes it's just _there_ , watching him, Michael's light shining out of dead eyes.

The war between Michael and Lucifer will never end. It slows sometimes; pauses for Sam to drink _take, eat of my body and drink of my blood_ and his body to be healed. Adam's body doesn't heal, doesn't live any longer. Michael animates it, but that's all.

Sam hopes Adam's soul isn't down here, too.

Time passes very differently here; each minute weights him down until he feels heavy and stupid with it, a blanket covering him that he can't shrug off.

After a while the blanket comforts him, confines him, binds him, keeps him. Keeps him here even as he slips away, bleeding a little bit of himself out into the nothingness, truly becoming a part of it.

~~~~~

The first thing Sam notices is it's cold. He hasn't been cold in…a long time.

He's flat on his back on the ground, and there's a stone digging into him, and it hurts. He rolls over slowly, stomach shifting unpleasantly, then shifting again when Sam pushes himself up onto his knees.

He gags and coughs, stomach heaving until he throws up; nothing in his stomach to come up but some bile, fingers clenching around tufts of dead grass to steady himself while he dry heaves.

 _Blood, there should be blood, where is it?_

He gags again, spits some more, then flops back down on the ground.

It takes a while for his stomach to settle enough to allow him to move, and then it's slow, careful, his legs wobbly at first.

He's back. Body is whole, and he's alone in his head, and he's sitting in the cemetery he vaguely remembers from Before.

 _His hands, fists, slamming into Dean over and over again. Bones crunching, shattering, the warm splatter of blood. The absolute satisfaction Lucifer's feeling at beating Dean to a bloody pulp._

A curl of heat moves through him, and Sam shakes off it and the memory, and really looks around him. It's dark, save for the moon shining down, and it's quiet around him, save for night noises. There are some crickets nearby; their chirping echoes in the stillness. He's in the cemetery.

He needs answers. Needs to figure out how long he was down there, how he got back, and why he's back.

He needs—something.

~~~~~

Dean looks good. Looks like he's doing pretty well, settling in with Lisa and Ben.

Sam steps a little closer and waits for the sizzle and pop of the light going out.

Now he can watch a while longer.

~fin~


End file.
